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Testing an Orange SPV 'Smartphone'
theolein writes "The register has an article discussing the first major phone company's implementation -Orange SPV- of MS Smartphone as well as a common user's experiences with it. More or less confirms what quite a few expected."
I went in to my local Orange shop to get a demo of one of these phones last week as I was tempted to get one.
Fortunately I decided against getting one when the salesman tried to make me believe it was normal for a mobile phone to take 60 seconds to start up and log on to the network!
My overall impressions of the device was that it was incredibly slow, not slow as in running Doze 98 on a P75, but slow as in Doze XP on a 286. It was also incredibly heavy and long for a mobile phone.
I can't see Orange shifting many. Me, I'm waiting for the SonyEricsson P800.
Looks like the convicted monopolist is up to their old tricks again: "For reasons best known to itself (and possibly whoever devised the Ts & Cs of its Microsoft licence) Orange has crippled the SPV so that it will only run Microsoft certified software. According to developer Paul O'Brien (who also runs MoDaCo), prerelease versions of the phone had the Microsoft Root Digital Certificate, which trusted certificates produced with the Smartphone 2002 SDK, but this was removed from the shipping device. How to win developer hearts and minds - let them get their apps running fine on the prototypes, then break them when the product ships."
Next time you upgrade with orange, ask the assistant to quote 'return / failure rates' on all the handsets available....
I was thinking of upgrading - It would be cool to have a camera or the ability to run my own applications on my phone. Despite the cool new products available, I have decided not to buy for at least 6 more months because all of the phones currently available are even less reliable than my t68 (which is only just tolerable).
According to Orange, there are problems with all the new generation of Camera / Organiser phones. Aparantly, the worst offender is the new Nokia camera phone - that had a more than 90% return rate due to hardware faults. I am sure this MS phone could be worse! My Ericsson T68 had to be swaped 4 times this year - I'm astonished that anything could be worse!
As all the mobile phone companies seem to be rushing out new models in time for xmas - it seems the idea of waiting untill the product is right has been completely forgotten.
By the way, if you ARE thinking of upgrading - a heavy user on Orange can usually blag a free handset. Rather than go through the upgrades line, go to the disconnection line and tell them you want to end your contract with orange because O2 or Vodaphone has offered your chouice of handset as a joining incentive.
Orange will usually offer you a decent handset for free as an incentive to keep you to another year's contract. A heavy user should never have to pay for upgrades!
the motorolla i90c is.
it's a nextel phone.
-eek
-- sigs suck --
... so bad in fact I started writing exactly what that dude wrote about his SPV. Unfortunately, I wanted to write too much and never finished the damn thing. There's two great features of the Philips I love - the "egg timer of death" (every now and then an egg timer just appears - the only way you get rid of it is to pull the battery) and the complete inability to remember the time and date if it crashes (see previous) and you have to pull the battery. Oh, and the THIRD thing I hate about it is that although it has xxx kb for storing background images, it can only store around 10 SMSs. Go figure that, eh ? Oh AND you just can't redial easily. AND it's got a really unfriendly keyboard lock / unlock feature. It's time for bed. I can't start this whinge now.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
I've been very happy with my Kyocera 6035.
When the flip is closed, it is a tri-band mobile phone, with real keys and one touch access to the Palm address book.
With the flip open, you get the Palm 3.5 OS, and access to all the desktop connectivity and 3rd party programs available for Palm.
Downsides: A bit bulky and heavy, wider than most phones, thicker than most PDA's. Grayscale screen, small for PDAs (but this also makes for great battery life). A little cludgy to surf the web with, but it can easily get you the movie listings and such.
http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm ?Story_ID=1454300
Very insightful article, happily one of their free ones. Microsoft is in for a tough fight. They've gotten little licensing from major players, and are using alternate, less effective channels to gain a foothold.
The Nokia 7650, the Nokia 7210, the Nokia 6310 and just about every other Java based mobile phone that I've used are all end-user programmable and not only that provide application suites to download the applications without doing OTA.
You are confusing the phone capabilities with network capabilites.
Yell at your moronic telco, not at the phone companies.
I've used a Motorola i85s here in Australia as a Java "JVM" despite it not being able to be connected to the mobile network due to incompatibilities and lack of a SIM card. I've used a Siemens, an N7650, 6310 and 7210 all downloading applications via OTA and Infrared.
Clearly you need to do some research before your particular rant, as you are quite wrong.
I've never encountered a Java-based phone that didn't allow people to install their own apps for free.
Here are some Java-based phones that I know allow developers to install their own apps:
There is a technical reason why Windows should not be used for phones. The version of Windows used in the phones doesn't support full memory protection, making it easy to corrupt and use the phone hardware in any way you might like.
Symbian for mobile devices on the other hand does protect memory using the hardware and as far as I can tell Symbian is not open to such great abuses as Windows.
Symiab also operates faster than Windows as it does not have the huge amount of over engineering that Windows has.
Martin Piper
Owner - ReplicaNet and RNLobby
Yes. Lots
Most even if you have to pay for the abilty to download software OTA you can send it via IR, cable form your computer (Nokia 7650 does this) or Bluetooth.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
What ones have you seen? As I said, I've never seen a Java-based phone that prevents developers from loading their own apps.
You can get the LG 5350, Samsung SPH-A500, Samsung SPH-N400, Sanyo 4900, and Sanyo 5300 through Sprint PCS. There's a developer program at developer.sprintpcs.com.
You can get the Motorola i85s, i50sx, i55sr, i80s, i90c, and i95cl through Nextel. There are developer programs from Nextel and Motorola.
You can get the RIM BlackBerry 5810 from AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile. RIM has a developer's site with an SDK and simulator.
Developers use the Smartphone Development Kit, which comes with test certificates for dev purposes and with an emulator, in case you don't have a device.
The Treo is indeed the best integrated phone/PDA on the market currently. Specifically the 270 or 300 have a nicely developed UI that allow most common features to be accessed quickly with minimal keystrokes. There is an on-screen keyboard usable with fingers or the built-in thumbboard works as well, the most easiest way is to select the numbers from the contact list. It also syncs to Outlook or other PIMs for contacts & diary entries. In the US, Sprint also has a great deal for bundled Data access including a specific Treo 300 phone. The GPRS upgrade has been approved by most GPRS carriers including all the Australian carriers where I live. Only limit is the 270 screen which washes out in direct sunlight. Also early versions had a bad backlight that could fail in the first few weeks of use. As in all things, these devices will get better but for the time being it is the best combination for somebody who doesn't want to carry 2 devices. Cheers VikingBrad
Orange is a telecommunications company in Europe. They sell a cell phone that uses Microsoft software.
Apple Telecommunications is a telecommunications company in Australia. They were named Apple to emphasize they are competing against Orange. Apple Computers has scared Apple Telecommunications into changing their name to Green.......
This is a typical Microsoft-bashing Register article, written by someone who hasn't even tried the phone. I have. I like it a lot - the phone can do full Internet browsing, and also has MSN Messenger. Synchronisation with Outlook has been perfect, and I nor any other users I've talked to have had any problems whatsoever with dialling or receiving messages.
Of course you can't see everything on a web page, the screen is only 176x220 resolution; but if you visit pages optimised for mobile devices (and there are a lot of them) then there's no problem.
The phone hasn't crashed for me yet. I've had it for two weeks and use it quite a lot. I guess YMMV, but others I've talked to have had similar crash-free experiences. It crashes about as much as any other new unpatched phone, such as the T68m (which you'll remember received a whole load of bugfixes before it worked well).
I had no problems in using the camera - I don't know what this 'ten presses to take a picture' nonsense is. Plus, the camera quality is significantly better or at least as good as any other mobile camera out now; a simple comparison of photos, e.g. SPV vs. GX-10 will show this. And sheesh, it's only supposed to be a mobile camera, not a professional one!
As for lag, yes, there is some. Certainly not '30 second lag times', I don't think I've ever had any more than 5 second lag. Most of the time it is on the scale of 1-2 seconds.
There's a lot of talk about, 'Oh, I'll just wait until the Sony Ericsson P800 comes out'. Well, you can wait if you like, it's only been delayed for several months now. Plus, the P800 will cost at least £200 more than the SPV, so what use is there in comparing two products whose prices differ so greatly? (The SPV costs from free - with contract - to £100 for upgrade).
Instead of basing your opinion on a single review, I suggest that you check out this forum about the Smartphone: http://modaco.com/smartphone/viewforum.php?f=2. The reports aren't all positive, by any means. The phone seems to provoke a love-hate relationship, but there are a lot of people who love the phone. Compared to my old Sony J70 phone, the SPV is incredibly better and lightyears ahead of my old Visor Deluxe PDA.